i hate the holidays. i always have.

i think the problem can mostly be traced back to my shit childhood. i used to have an incredible happiness that went with them as a very young child. i loved christmas, all kids do. but eventually the extreme happiness was replaced with extreme anguish and anxiety, as it began year after year i became more perceptive of how terribley depressing they were.

my family was never one for emotional warmth, and there was no time that it was more obvious than at family holidays. my father's side of the family were the only ones we ever really spent holidays with, as my mothers side of the family lived in tennessee, and my father's parents lived the next town over. my father's family were embittered people, who were definately not christmas people, and seemed to be only going through the motions for the benefit of my brothers and sisters and me. the only person that genuinely seemed to enjoy them was my mother, who was always quick to keep us away from the alcohol fueled fights that would occur after the big dinner. after my parents divorced and my mother was excluded from our lives, it got even worse. without my mother there to shield us from it, it spiralled out of control.

it would start with the sniping. little comments about the food, someone's clothing, something that was said at thanksgiving would snowball into a huge fight, lubricated by a few glasses of old grandad whiskey. there was several times that i can recall wars of words turning into physical altercations.

it became, around the time i turned 10 or so, a time of year that i dreaded. i would avoid it as much as possible. with each passing year, it got worse. i was pretty much completely despising of it by the time i was in the foster homes i spent most of my teen life in, and what little joy i had found in the debacle quickly died completely.

christmas in the foster homes was... painful. it usually entailed a few gifts for the foster kids to keep us sated, and then a lot of big happy jubilation withthe biological family.

i often found it best to just stay as much out of the picture during the holidays as i could. the foster families felt akward having me there, and i felt even more akward being there, invading their happy family picture with my anguish and misery. i have sometimes wondered how many of the family cards i have been (thankfully) cropped out of from those days.

while most of it stems from the rather unpleasant memories that come tied to the holidays past, part of it, i am sure, also stems from the "family" stigma attatched to those particular holidays, christmas in particular.

even when we were a "family" due to being within the same house, my biological family was not. we were people trapped in a room together because tradition demands that we be. false smiles, false happiness, false cranberry jelly from a can.

because so many of the years of my life were spent away from my siblings and mother, we have a closeness now that the hurricane that was our life with our father and his family has passed. but it is not a true closeness. it is less people that grew up together, as we did not, so much as a group of survivors that claimed survival from a terrible tragedy, but don't know each other well. this makes christmas with them like a big game of "well, we're in the same room... now what?"

in my adult life i have gotten very bitter about christmas for the most part. the extreme commercialization of it has made it even more tedious.

and i get jealous.

SO jealous.

i see families who are close and are at their happiest when reunited by the holidays. people that grew up together, that know one another, that love one another. their lives may not be perfect, but they have one another, and that is enough to make them happy.

i often think a lot of why my paternal urges are so strong is to create the happy family i never had. i want so desperately to be the people i see, and the only way i can ever create that is by creating a new family.

which is not to say i have not tried to assimilate myself into real families before, as i have... many times.

over the years their have been people i have befriended who take me to meet their family, and the family loves me as well. and they seem to sense my depression about not being a member of this magical picture of biological bliss, and they feel sorry for me and declare me "like a family member."

and i love it.

but it is not enough.

it's like disneyland. i go to a magical place that is so astoundingly happy i can't help but want to immerse myself in it and want to live there, to escape my grim reality. to each day rise from my bed and step out of my bedroom as my siblings and parents march by, like an estatic light parade. to sip tea with a sweet old grandmother who tells tales of coming to america for the first time while songs from the old country play gently in the background. to sit together playing board games and laughing about funny things we did as kids.

like they seem to do.

but i know, just as it is with disneyland, i do not belong here. i am not a part of this place, i am merely a visitor with an all day pass, here to create fond memories before going back home to my real life.

i love them for it, and am honored to be a part of the joy for that moment, but in the back of my head i know me being a part of it is just as false as the smiles and canned cranberry jelly that sat at the table of my childhood holidays. their hapiness is real, my being an intregal part of it is not.

but the thing that saves this from being miserabley depressing is knowing that while i am not, sadly, a real part of these familys, i know that someday, health and bigotry based laws allowing, i will have this happy family that will be mine.

today i sat looking through the pictures of ian, nathan, and their family, and cried. for many reasons, i found myself crying. crying because, selfishly, i am jealous of the INCREDIBLE bond they have. crying because i so badly want to see myself in those pictures, as a child, beaming, joyous, loving. crying because i know i will never get to see pictures of myself as a child, as my father's family destroyed most of them. crying because i want so badly just want to be normal, and have a normal childhood. crying because i was so touched by their incredible auras, burning white hot with famalial love for one another. crying because seeing that love gives me hope that one day my children will hold one another, grinning at the camera and my eye behind it.

hope.

this is the gift that is the best i have recieved this year.

hope for better christmas futures.

love.

familial love.

this is the best gift most of you will be recieving this year, wether you notice it or not.

notice it.

cherish it.

merry christmas

Awesome...Hope is the true gift of Christmas, thank you for sharing the truth, friend.

Wow, I'm tearing up after reading that. That must have taken alot of courage to type that out for all of us to see. Thank you for your honesty. It is beautiful.

I'm lucky in that my family was always happy and christmas was always a joyous occaision. Your honesty reminds me that "family" is the most important thing in the world and that's where our focus should be.

I'm sure from your heart felt words that you will achieve your goal of having your own happy family and without a doubt you will make one FANTASTIC parent.

Thank you for sharing.

bluesbaby said:

thank you for reading it

Chris!

Now you have me crying.

I'm sorry that I triggered such painful feelings in you with my thread.

But I'm also glad that you could feel my intentions with it - to share the good memories shared between Ian and myself.

And you're right, photos don't always show the whole picture. We both had a very rough childhood. But we also had loving parents, so that makes it okay. We made it out alive and fairly well-adjusted. I'm grateful for that.

But like you've probably heard so many times, it's not where you come from that matters. Of course, it makes for a great history. It's more about where you're at now and what you choose to do with your life. And you're doing very well I might add. You've overcome the odds to become an amazing person, despite your family.
[This message was edited Thu Dec 18 14:42:17 PST 2003 by TRON]

bkw said:

well, to be honest, each time i write something like this on the org it gets a bit easier, although, i still always feel vulneable as there are a small handfull that see me writing stuff like this as beeing some huge drama vampire, feeding off of it. but i have started to not care what they think.

that is the biggest thing that gets me about christmas. people get caught up in the commercialization of it. it seems to be about what they get or don't get, and never really notice how extremely wealthy they already are because they have something some of us do not, and they forget about that.

and thank you, i hope i get the chance to prove myself as a parent.

And the greatest gift you can give yourself is to make this dream a reality..

Thanks for sharing, Mr. Cborgman.

TRON said:

no, no, no.

your thread gave me hope. i always get like this around christmas. your thread makes it better, it didn't trigger it.

and thank you.

cborgman said:

You're very welcome.

sag10 said:

thank u.

someday... my biggest fear now is if i do ever get to be a parent can i logically choose to? i don't want my kids nor partner to have to suffer what will probably be a very painful time when the disease takes over. so many issues.

these things have a way of working themselves out though

cborgman said:

I understand... I never thought I could be a good mother..was so afraid that my issues from my childhood would take control (they have been dealth with)...but when I practically raised my GodDaughter, I knew I would have been a wonderful mom..

And I think it is because we tend to have so much compassion for children.... I don't know about you but I can look a child in the eyes, and know exactly how much happiness they have in their lives...



.
[This message was edited Thu Dec 18 14:53:42 PST 2003 by sag10]

sag10 said:

totally. working in a building where lots of kids are it happens all the time. sometimes they come into my office, and stay for a bit talking about whatever they want to talk about, and leave, and it drastically swings my whole mood in any one of many different directions.

okay, feeling much happier today.

shaved my head this morning for the repetory company shows... it always puts me in a fun mood, event hough it's a lot of work.